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OREGON CITY, OR-Mills Corp. of Arlington, VA, has optioned 77 acres of a one-time landfill here located off Exit 10 from Interstate 205, adjacent to the End of the Oregon Trail Interpretive Center. The publicly traded mall developer has a one-year option on the property and the right to sign a long-term lease.The property is owned by Jack Parker's Park Place Development, which previously sold 16.5 acres of the landfill to Home Depot, which has developed one of its retail warehouses on the property after much ado about methane emissions. A portion of the land optioned by Mills is currently being utilized as a driving range.Oregon City manager Larry Patterson tells GlobeSt.com that he has been in conversation with Mills regarding the site, but there has been no real discussion about what exactly might be developed. In the regional 2040 Plan, Oregon City is designated as a regional center, which means it should provide goods and services to an area well beyond its city limits."We're trying to put something in there that will be successful and meet those criteria," says Patterson. "Something of such size could be a tremendous catalyst, but whether we are on board depends on the specifics of the project. Is it a mall or something else?"The city changed the zoning of the landfill last year to accommodate retail shops, restaurants and tourist-oriented businesses. Across the street from the site, a new Amtrak station has opened, and a new dock on the nearby Willamette River was completed last year to accommodate commercial vessels. Mill's develops and owns four different kinds of retail products. They are super-regional shopping and entertainment centers branded as "Mills"; conventional regional shopping centers anchored by traditional department stores, and; open-air retail and entertainment centers. The "Mills"-branded locations average about 1.4 million sf, while the regional shopping centers and open-air retail centers general average less than 1 million sf. The company has also started developing a new kind of destination retail and entertainment center it calls Xanadu. Only one has been completed to date, in Madrid, Spain, but work appears to be moving ahead for another on a 104-acre site in East Rutherford, NJ. In addition to some 220 retail stores, the Madrid development includes Parque de Nieve, the largest indoor snow sports facility in Europe; Cinesa, a movie complex with 15 theatres; Formula Zero, an indoor go-cart track, and; Tazz, a high-tech bowling center. The New Jersey project, slated for the parking lot of the Continental Airlines Arena, include North America's first indoor ski dome, the country's largest cineplex, a minor league ballpark and dozens of high-end stores and restaurants.